Recently, I had a gut feeling that the campaign of lies and deceit crafted to
elect John McCain had hit rock bottom. We had seen the worst, I convinced
myself.

Then I saw an ad that the Republican Jewish Coalition is running in Jewish
community newspapers across the country. And I realized I was wrong
— we are
nowhere near rock bottom.

In the ad, a small color photo of Sen. Barack Obama is set within a large
black-and-white image of right-wing, anti-Israel, Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan.
In alarmist rhetoric, the ad prods Jewish voters to be ‘concerned’ that Buchanan
has ‘endorsed’ what it describes as Obama’s ‘dangerous views on Israel.’

Now, I have to say up front that I know Jewish communities pretty well. I grew up
in the great Midwestern
shtetl of Metropolitan Detroit and am darn proud of it. So, I know what
makes Jewish people worry, what makes them ask questions about a candidate, what
makes them afraid.

There is nothing more offensive to a Jewish person in the United States right now
than the idea of electing Pat Buchanan President. Buchanan did not just wake up
and become a symbol of anti-Semitism. He has over time repeatedly made
statements favorable to Hitler, critical of Israel, and generally hostile to
ethnic minorities. Buchanan is the kind of politician who speaks and writes as
if Jews enjoy the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship by the grace
of their Christian hosts. For Jewish voters who see the ad, therefore, the dots
are not hard to connect: Obama is anti-Jewish.

As if the content is not bad enough — an ad that uses logical
fallacy to falsely brand a presidential candidate anti-Jewish —
the strategy used
to spread the ad is nothing less than sinister. Instead, of employing direct
mail, TV, or mainstream newspapers, the Republican Jewish Coalition cloaked the
ad in the pages of a trusted community institution: local Jewish newspapers.
With few exceptions, only Jewish voters will see this expertly positioned
propaganda.

Reacting to the print ad campaign by the Republic Jewish Coalition is not as easy
as crying "anti-Semitism." Frankly, it is far worse than that. This kind of ad,
which uses juxtaposed images and incredibly misleading statements to claim that
Obama and Buchanan somehow share views and goals--that they are, somehow,
Israel-hating political brethren--is the most vile kind of marketing imaginable:
a print campaign designed to profit from the fears and insecurities of an ethnic
group.

This is an ad made by people who created a list of Jews, who ran focus groups,
who tested trigger words, and menacing photos — until they found the combination
of words and images that would spark fear in the greatest number of Jewish
voters with the most fear about Sen. Obama and in the least amount of time.

Moreover, this ad campaign comes at a time when the same lists of Jewish voters
are receiving Republican-funded push polls engaged in the same attempt to spread
the lie that Sen. Obama is anti-Jewish. In one such push poll, for example,
Jewish voters have been asked how they would feel if they
"found out" that
President Ahmadinejad of Iran had "endorsed Barack Obama."

This ad targeting Jewish fear by associating Obama with Buchanan is anti-American
in the extreme. It is the politics of cruelty. It is immorality in print.

Forget every question you may have about Jewish people, about anti-Semitism,
about politics, about Israel, Palestinians, Iran, the Middle East, Obama,
McCain, Bush--forget it all for a second. Ask yourself this question instead:
What do you call it when a political party targets an ethnic minority with pure
lies in order to frighten them?

What is the word for that kind of behavior? Do we call it cynicism? How about
fascism? Do we call it evil?

In my family, we use a phrase to describe this kind of behavior, instead of a
single word: "Never again."

Anti-Obama ad courtesy of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

We do not say "Never again"
because this ad is somehow connected to another
Holocaust, but because when this kind of political behavior is allowed to go
unchallenged, then it is not just individuals who suffer, not just communities,
not just Jewish people (e.g., as it is this time)--it is all of us. All of
society, Jewish and non-Jewish, suffers from this kind of offensive, cynical,
soulless propaganda. Our entire society is diminished by it. And if we let it go
unchecked--if we allow the people who inject this kind of filth into our society
to remain unchallenged--then society itself begins to unravel.

I write from experience. The Republican Jewish Coalition's ads (three so far)
have made an alarming impact on Jewish communities across America.

Jewish voters are divided about 2-to-1 in favor Sen. Obama. That will not likely
change no matter how many nefarious ads appear in Jewish newspapers. The
Republican Party does not anticipate a majority of the Jewish vote this
November. Rather, they are investing in these campaigns with the long-term
electoral gain to be made by spreading lies about Sen. Obama
— lies designed by
political experts to divide Jewish communities against themselves.

The impact so far? Jewish friendships, families, and communities are being torn
apart by these Republican ads. An ad of Barack Obama inset on a giant picture of
Pat Buchanan is not just a political lie. It is the seed of division planted in
Jewish communities by the Republican party as part of a larger Machiavellian
plan to win elections. This vile ad must not stand. The campaign by the Republican Party to divide Jewish communities by aggressively
publishing anti-Obama ads in Jewish print papers must be exposed.

Most people in America do not even realize how influential Jewish print
newspapers are in this country. In an age of internet media, a vast majority of
Jewish households still receive the same print Jewish newspaper that they first
subscribed to decades earlier.

Growing up in Detroit, I can not remember a single day when we did not have a
copy of the Detroit Jewish News in our house. We changed the furniture, the
rugs, and the pictures on the walls, but the Jewish newspaper was always there.

Here is what can done about this ad campaign, right now.

First, we can tell everybody we know about these false and misleading ad
campaigns. Instead of assuming that everybody knows and understands what is
wrong with the language and images in them, we should tell people about how
false and sinister they are.

Second, we can send letters to the editorial offices of our local Jewish
newspapers. These letters should be polite, but they should firmly explain why
we expect editors to reject political ads crafted specifically to elicit fear in
Jews or in any other ethnic group. These letters should not endorse one
candidate for President over another, but insist that newspapers should not give
over the pages of their papers to malicious propaganda targeted at Jews. Editors
must hear our sense of concern and our sense of betrayal that such a campaign
would be allowed in the papers we have kept in our families for generations.

Third, we can talk about this ad with people in our social worlds: our colleagues
at work, our friends at synagogue, at the gym, in the park---everywhere. And as
we do this, we should not assume that the non-Jews in our lives cannot also play
an important role in this effort. The Republican Jewish Coalition may have only
targeted American Jews with this ad, but they offended everyone. And everybody
can use the power of their own voice to push back against immoral politics.

When a political party uses marketing techniques and lies to create tension in
any ethnic community, Americans of all ages and all views must stand up, stand
together, and demand that this immoral practice stop.

As the 2008 campaign shifts into high gear, we have seen a rise in the use of
falsehood and the use of lies and innuendo to incite fear amongst Jewish voters.

With the tragic exception of the "Swift-boat" ads of 2004 and the Willie Horton
ads in 1988, most part voters have seen past these ruses. However, 2008 has seen
new lows in disinformation pushed onto the Jewish community.

With two relatively new faces on the national scene, Democratic Presidential
nominee
Barack Obama and GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin
, whisper
campaigns by email have run rampant fueled by ill-informed partisans on each
side trying to define the other through blatant falsehoods.

A new low was struck when "low blow"
groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition
implied that Patrick Buchanan (who has praised Palin and written numerous
articles blasting Obama's policy positions) has the same agenda as Obama.

More shocking, the RJC admitted to running factually inaccurate "push poll"
calls
to Jewish voters in battleground states, asking respondents how they would feel
if they "learned" that Obama was being supported by terrorist leaders, that
Obama was a Muslim, or that Obama received financial support or contributed to
Palestinian groups in the Middle East. (In reality, Obama is a Christian and has
condemned Obama's support of Israel and campaign contributions from non-citizens
are illegal and would show up on campaign reports.) These tactics are meant to
play on fears and prejudices put in place by months of false e-mails against
Obama.

Unfortunately, since its inception, the Republican
Jewish Coalition (RJC)has operated via lies and fear-mongering. The RJC
resorts to attacks because they can not point to their own party or candidates
as being any better.

Otherwise, they would have to explain some of their inconsistencies such as

Why McCain told
UK Sky News in 2006 that the U.S. should talk with Hamas.

Why McCain toldHa’aretz reporter Amir Oren that he would use George H.W. Bush’s pro-Arab
Secretary of State James Baker as a Middle East Peace envoy.

Why McCain reversed his position on every issue
that he was once respected for as a man of principle, such opposing the use of
torture, opposing deficit-inducing tax-cuts for the rich and supporting for
comprehensive immigration reform.

Why McCain chose to appoint a vice-presidential nominee with no foreign policy
credentials (sorry, being located next to Canada and Russia don’t count unless
you actually meet with their governments involving policy), no record of
supporting Israel and a domestic policy record that is an anathema to most U.S
Jews.

Finally, they would have to explain why the House Republican leadership would
back a proposal to cut aid to Israel by 1% and then oppose the entire aid $2.4
billion aid package to Israel because the omnibus bill also contained a
provision that would lift the ban on aid to distribute contraceptives in third
world countries
ravaged by HIV. It makes
it look as of the Republicans were willing to sell out their support of Israel
in favor of extremist religious positions opposing the availability of
contraceptives as a means of reducing population and controlling the spread of
HIV (for the record, Democrats have voted to keep this provision in any aid
package the contained Israel aid because they viewed assisting Israel as a
higher priority).

These examples are not to imply that McCain or the Republicans are any different
than Democrats in their support of Israel. Both sides have their supporters and
detractors regarding Israel in approximately equal numbers and at the same
levels of leadership.

However, instead of touting their own candidates and party, the RJC has engaged
in a deceptive campaign of destruction and distraction, using lies and
half-truths to stoke unwarranted fear in the Jewish community to try to demonize
Obama and Biden (both have strong records of support for Israel and the domestic
issues that tend to concern the Jewish community such as having a balanced
energy policy and protecting freedom of religion).

By contrast, Democratic Jewish groups such as the
National Jewish Democratic Council have avoided the fear-mongering and
“guilt by association” ploys and focused on documented policy differences such
as McCain’s votes against the bipartisan Iran Sanctions Enabling Act.

Those in our community, regardless of partisan affiliation, who use
fear-mongering and “guilt by passing association” ploys to question the
patriotic or policy commitments of another candidate act every bit as morally
reprehensible as the “red-baiting” schemes of the 1950s where Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s vicious whisper campaigns turned passing associations of union
sympathizers (many of them Jewish) into false accusations of Communist and
anti-American affiliations which ruined careers and lives.

The sad things is that while Jews were often the victims of those campaigns in
the 1950s, the RJC is now the one leading that charge with their secret
push-polls and advertising campaigns.

As Rosh Hashanah comes upon us, we are reminded to do better and make the world a
better place by example by avoiding falsehoods such as these. Perhaps we should
remind the RJC that the Jewish Community deserves better than to have Jews use
the tactics that were once used against us.

Andrew Lachman is a member of the Democratic National Committee and President
of Democrats for Israel, Los Angeles.